Automated Banana Fiber Extraction Machine

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Automated Banana Fiber Extraction Machine

A banana is an edible fruit – botanically a berry produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering
plants in the genus Musa. In some countries, bananas used for cooking may be called "plantains",
distinguishing them from dessert bananas. The scientific names of most cultivated bananas are Musa
acuminata, Musa balbisiana, and Musa × paradisiaca for the hybrid Musa acuminata × M. balbisiana,
depending on their genomic constitution. The old scientific name for this hybrid, Musa sapientum, is no
longer used. Musa species are native to tropical Indomalaya and Australia, and are likely to have been
first domesticated in Papua New Guinea. They are grown in 135 countries, primarily for their fruit, and
to a lesser extent to make fiber, banana wine, and banana beer and as ornamental plants. The world's
largest producers of bananas in 2017 were India and China, which together accounted for approximately
38% of total production.

Here in Philippines, Saba (Musa acuminata × balbisiana), Lakatan (Musa acuminate), Latundan (Musa
sapientum) and Señorita (Musa acuminate) are the most common species of banana that was cultivated
by our local farmers. For the second quarter of 2019, banana production was estimated at 2.26 million
metric tons. It was 4.1 percent lower than the 2.36 million metric tons produced during the same period
of 2018. Davao Region recorded the highest share of 39.8 percent of total banana production, followed
by Northern Mindanao and SOCCSKSARGEN with 18.5 percent and 12.1 percent, respectively. Cavendish
variety with 1.21 million metric tons accounted for 53.6 percent of the country’s total banana
production. Saba variety shared 27.8 percent and Lakatan, 9.6 percent.

Aside from eating its fruits, other parts of banana tree have lots of uses. The banana peel can be dried
and deep fried to make chips, its leaves is commonly used as plates and wraps for suman, a rice cake
delicacy here in the Philippines. The trunk of these tree produces strong fiber that can be extracted and
use as raw materials in making native garments and yarns that can be mix together with cotton to make
beautiful and smooth fabrics. And the byproducts in extracting the fibers on its trunks can be use as raw
material in paper-making.

The natural fiber extraction is one of the oldest practices use to produce threads, garments, papers and
a lot more. It needed a lot of human efforts especially in harvesting the fruits, trunks and also in
extracting its fibers. That’s why we came up on an idea to create an automated fiber extracting machine
to lessen the human efforts and to speed up the production of this raw material and also to produce
finer fibers and to maximize the quality of the output.

There is an existing machine that was used by the farmers but it breaks the fibers and produce low
quality products. So, we design our machine that has sensors and controlled motors embedded on it so
we can extract cleaner, longer and higher quality fibers. The only job that the operator will do is to feed
the banana trunks and the machine will do the extraction process by running the trunks back and forth
to remove all the pulps and saps. Inside the machine, there is a comb like device that will straighten up
and clean the fibers from residues.
On the mouth of the machine, there is a proximity sensor, so when it detects the trunks the roller
mounted on the mouth of the machine will run and when the sensor detects that it is already the end of
the trunks, the motor will run in reverse to move out the extracted fibers. This mechanism will produce
cleaner and straighter fibers because of the comb-like device inside the machine.

Machine Design

We design our machine to be as compact as possible to save space in the workplace and make it more
ergonomic.
As you can see on our design, all of the components are as close as possible to each other. Since our
machine has a lot of rotating parts, we consider the use of pump belt and conveyor belts to reduce
vibrations that may affect the efficiency of the motors. The black tray in front is where the output
product will be spilled out, to easily collect them. The byproducts of the extraction process, like the
pulps, will be spilled underneath the machine, which is consider as the catch basin of all the waste
during the extraction process.
The rectangular object that you can see beside the main extracting device is the comb-like object that
will further refine the finish product which is the extracted banana fiber. The two grey cylindrical object
that was placed horizontally are the rollers that will give grip on the trunk while being extracted, and the
red cylindrical object is a shock that will further help the roller to press in the trunk.

All of the motors and sensors will be programmed by a microprocessor embedded on its circuits. The
rollers will only starts spinning when the proximity sensor attached on the top cover detects the banana
trunk. And while the trunk is being extracted inside, the motor will run in reverse whenever the
proximity sensor didn’t detect the trunk, so the machine will only spill out the extracted banana fibers.

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